Indie action RPG Hammerwatch 2 is more like A Link to the Past than Diablo 4, its developer says
The dungeon crawling Hammerwatch series is lowkey one of my favorite co-op RPG romps, and today the series gets a much bigger sequel that has me psyched to go back. Hammerwatch 2 takes the series' fast-paced dungeon battles I enjoyed with friends and beefs them up with an open world, bigger skills list, gear, and quest system. It sounds like the indie upstart action RPG that we need right in the wake of Diablo 4. It's not heavily inspired by the modern giants of ARPGs though, its developer Crackshell tells me, and is instead chasing the greatness of much older gaming touchstones.
The Hammerwatch games are modestly priced and are easy to pick up with a couple friends for a few nights. You don't have to play co-op, mind, I just find it a particularly good diversion with friends who are burnt out on the live service grind. The original was a simple class-based dungeon crawl on premade levels with fun little secret paths to find. Its sequel, Heroes of Hammerwatch, dabbled in run-based mechanics and procedurally generated levels with new classes and a DLC campaign.
Hammerwatch 2 is even more ambitious yet, as Crackshell's creative director Jochum Skoglund explained in a gameplay showcase this summer. There are quests now, for one, instead of the straightforward gauntlet of hallways and monsters. There's an entire loot and gear system now too, and a crafting system for consumables. Oh, and it's got an overlay map, thank goodness.
Skoglund mentioned taking cues from bigger ARPGs, but he wasn't talking about the Baal in the room, or even POE2, he tells me. «This is more like [The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past], where even if the main quest line is linear, you can do a lot of things around the world and you can do things in
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